Pixar’s first film with a nonwhite cast is visually spectacular and has some charm and heart, but the story is too familiar — and there’s a grave problem.

Steven D. Greydanus

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, a 2009 collection of short stories by David Eagleman, imagines life beyond the grave in a variety of mutually exclusive ways. In a fragment called “Metamorphosis,” Eagleman describes a waiting room or airport-type lobby in which the departed mill about socializing — but only as long as they are remembered among the living.

When the last memory of a dead person dies on Earth, the individual’s name is called and they depart through a door to what is said to be a better place, though no one has come back to tell what lies beyond. (Eagleman calls this departure “the third death,” the first two being bodily death and burial.)

In this arrangement, some very famous souls live on for centuries, while others last only a short time. In a sad irony, many new arrivals just miss being reunited with those who had long awaited them, since the new arrivals were the ones whose memories had sustained those they missed.

It seems likely that “Metamorphosis” was an important influence on the afterlife in Pixar’s Coco, though naturally the Land of the Dead in Coco is far more colorful and varied than Eagleman’s fluorescent-lit lobby. In that respect Coco reflects another notable influence: Fox’s The Book of Life (2014), from Mexican filmmaker Jorge Gutiérrez, with which it shares a Mexican cultural milieu and a Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) theme.

With one crucial exception, almost every important idea in “Metamorphosis” shows up in Coco, including the peril of being forgotten on Earth just before the loved ones remembering you arrive.

The exception is this. In Coco, when the forgotten pass from the Land of the Dead, there is no door, and no one calls their name or tells them they are going to a better place. Their skeletal forms are wracked with tremors and weakness, and they simply fade into dust. And this is not called “the third death,” but “the final death.”

On Earth, and even in the afterlife, Mexico’s Catholic heritage has not been entirely effaced. There are church buildings and crosses on monuments in cemeteries and in homes. An image of Our Lady of Guadalupe adorns a wall in the home where our protagonist, 12-year-old Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez), lives with his extended family.

Miguel’s elderly, irascible Abuelita (Renée Victor) crosses herself, and someone says “Santa María!” I don’t remember any actual priests or nuns, but we see that there are movie priests and nuns in a clip of a film-within-the-film starring Miguel’s hero: the late, great Mexican guitarist and singer Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), who not only sings and plays guitar in a Roman collar, but even flies like Superman.

Yet what good is Catholic iconography when the movie pretty explicitly stipulates that life after death is strictly a temporary affair, tied to earthly memory? A stopover in skeleton-land is one thing, as long as there’s some openness to the idea that this isn’t the end. A “final death” with no hint or hope of a further stage or life beyond seems to make a mockery of that image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the crosses dotting the landscape.

Ten years ago, in Ratatouille, Linguini could mention his late mother’s belief in heaven and her being “covered, afterlife-wise.” (The tie-in short, Your Friend the Rat, includes a historical pageant in which a 14th-century bishop, slain by the Black Death, is depicted ascending into heaven in a celestial beam of light.)

Now, in a film with a Catholic cultural setting and an explicit depiction of the afterlife, heaven is not only unmentioned but virtually excluded. Alas. Coco is not a great film, but it has some notable virtues, and I want to like it more than I do.

I’m tempted to say I’d like to see the version of Coco Pixar would have made 10 years ago. Not really, I guess, since then we wouldn’t have Ratatouille. Still, I can’t help wondering what the team that made Ratatouille might have done with Coco.

In some ways they’re practically the same movie, and not just because Coco and Ratatouille are the only Pixar films with non-Anglophone cultural settings. Nor because, like too many animated films in the decade since Ratatouille, Coco also centers on a young protagonist with a creative passion his family doesn’t understand and wouldn’t approve of, though of course the family comes around in the end.

Like Remy in Ratatouille, Miguel pursues his dream — playing guitar — behind his family’s backs. Remy and Miguel each find instruction and inspiration in a deceased celebrity with an inspirational motto, an artist and entertainer who is perhaps his country’s greatest icon of his chosen field.

In both films the plot is set in motion when a misstep in the protagonist’s pursuit of his secret passion unexpectedly triggers a fateful crisis, separating him from his family and casting him into unfriendly surroundings.

Here the protagonist forms an alliance with a marginalized individual who hides him and helps him move unseen in exchange for the protagonist’s help with his own aspirations.

Remy and Miguel each come in some way face to face with his departed hero (Remy in imagination, Miguel in fact). Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, one of the two main characters learns something unexpected about his ancestry and confronts a scoundrel who plotted to steal his family legacy.

Parallels could be drawn to other Pixar films, notably Up, though the film to which Coco is most indebted is not a Pixar release, but The Book of Life, which is also about a young Mexican musician who travels to the Land of the Dead and back.

These parallels might matter less if Coco were less predictable and more daring, more soulful. Lacking any real sense of revelation, the film gets by on Latin charm, a well-polished story, dazzling imagery, and one shrewd powerhouse emotional moment at the end, like the climax of Finding Dory with the converging shell lines.

That said, after 18 straight features with hardly any nonwhite characters and/or voice actors, all but one set in the Anglophone world, the significance of a Pixar film set in Mexico, with mostly Latin voice talent, is notable. Miguel’s picturesque village, and the emphasis on the folk rituals around Día de Muertos, might make for a rather Epcot-ish pastiche of Mexican culture, but you have to start somewhere.

As Coco explains, in whole or in part, on Día de Muertos (often called Día de los Muertos in the U.S.) families gather to remember their deceased loved ones with traditions that include cemetery visits, telling stories about the departed and setting up ofrendas, altars decked with collections or offerings including photographs and tokens of the dead, candles, food and Mexican marigolds, with trails of marigold petals said to help guide the spirits of the departed to visit the living.

The film does not explain that Día de Muertos is a three-day festival coinciding with All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween), All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, or that praying for the departed is part of the tradition. What would be the point of praying?

One of the film’s most brilliant strokes is the conceit that the dead can visit the living on Día de Muertos only if their photograph has been placed on the family ofrenda. Between the realms of the living and the dead are border-crossing security checkpoints (!) where scanners identify the skeletal spirits and pull up matching ofrenda photographs — if any.

Thus, in the Land of the Dead Miguel falls in with Hector (Gael García Bernal), an unhappy rogue desperate to cross over to the living to see his kin before he is forgotten, but left off the family ofrenda.

This device dramatizes the importance not only of remembering the departed and telling their stories, but also of ritually honoring them, of keeping them present before our eyes as well as in our minds.

The film also celebrates extended family and honoring and valuing the elderly, like Miguel’s great-grandmother, Mamá Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguia). “She has trouble remembering things,” Miguel explains in introductory narration (another Ratatouille link), “but it’s good to talk to her anyway.”

This isn’t just a heartwarming throwaway line. The importance of emotional connections with the elderly, of engaging them and hearing what they have to say, is crucial to the story. The film also draws on the connection between memory and music, to powerful effect. Once again, a middling Pixar movie had me in tears on demand.

Then there is the vast, kaleidoscopic, phantasmagorical realm that is the Land of the Dead. It seems at least an incipient trope that the Land of the Dead is more colorful and perhaps even more fun than the land of the living (see Corpse Bride as well as The Book of Life). This includes the iridescent alebrije, magical spirit-creatures said to help “guide” the dead on their “journey,” though no one seems to be journeying anywhere.

Interwoven with all these engaging elements is a tiresome tale about why Miguel’s family — especially Mamá Coco’s daughter, Miguel’s Abuelita — are violently opposed to music, and the complications arising from Miguel’s passion for music.

“The world may follow the rules,” Miguel’s hero de la Cruz says in an old VHS cassette Miguel watches in secret over and over, “but I must follow my heart!” While it’s true that the movie ultimately subverts this romantic individualism, once again it’s the family rule that’s wrong and the protagonist’s heart that’s right.

Coco’s flaws and limitations would sting less if it weren’t the one original Pixar film in a string of sequels, following Finding Dory and Cars 3 and preceding Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2. Coco is better than Pixar’s last original film, The Good Dinosaur, a rare misfire. That isn’t saying much. With each new release it seems clearer that Pixar’s glory days are an increasingly distant memory.

I liked Coco more than not. My rating at Decent Films is B-minus, which is not glowing, but I don’t think it’s an “opposition view” either.

I appreciate your cultural points 1–3, though they don’t really undermine my argument. My point is that Catholicism explicitly exists in this world; this is not a story like Moana that takes place in a narrative space untouched by Christianity. How Catholic or not Miguel’s family may be isn’t really the issue.

You seem to have misread me on the influence of Eagleman on Coco. I said nothing about leitmotif, structure or storytelling (if I recall correctly, Eagleman’s very brief fragment tells no story and has no narrative structure). Rather, it is Eagleman’s “ideas,” and specifically his account (this particular account) of how the afterlife works in relation to memory on Earth, that I believe was influential on the writers of Coco. (Perhaps they encountered it, directly or indirectly, though a 2009 episode of Radiolab, “After Life,” which discussed it.)

You will find a great many glowing reviews of Coco also noting the obvious debt to The Book of Life. Beyond that, I think the next greatest narrative debt is to Ratatouille, with obvious echoes of Up (childhood idol turns out to be a demented killer obsessed with his own legacy) and others.

There are always other connections to be made, and I am always happy to hear what other people saw in a movie. Please feel free to comment again and highlight the connections you see with Monsters, Inc.

Posted by Rodolfo on Tuesday, Dec, 5, 2017 11:51 PM (EST):

News flash to you Mr Graydanus:

(1) Not all Mexicans are Catholics or know anything about Catholicism but all Mexicans know something about Día de los Muertos;
(2) In almost all Mexico, but specially in the Altiplano, the narrations of Mictlan and Tonantzin-Coatlicue precede any Catholic narration of afterlife and the Virgin of Guadalupe (I guess they are good examples of catechetical inculturation if you know what I mean);
(2) 99.99% of Mexicans are Guadalupanos regardless of their faith and beliefs or lack of (just google Pope Francis and Virgen of Gualdalupe, please; or have you ever heard and understood the line “de Guadalupe a Reyes”?—to give you a hint it’s related to the Christian and pagan festivities we Mexicans celebrate between Guadalupe, December 12, and Three Kings, January 6);
(3) So (surprise!!) you can be a non-Catholic Mexican and still celebrate Día de los Muertos and Virgen de Guadalupe or be a Catholic Mexican and still don’t observe any (my paternal family, for example);

Now, Coco’s leitmotif, structure and storytelling is more related to Monster Inc. than to Eagleman’s Metamorphosis or Gutierrez’s The Book of Life. I guess you were so invest in writing a “catholic-opposition-view” to the film that you missed the obvious.

Best regards

Posted by mrscracker on Monday, Nov, 27, 2017 12:47 PM (EST):

You were right, Coco was pretty disappointing. Too bad because it looks like there was a lot of talent behind it.
The “Frozen” short was awful. Seriously, how do you spend that much time talking about “traditions” at Christmas with no reference to the Nativity? They showed a Menorah, which is fine, but otherwise seemed to be trying their hardest to avoid anything remotely Christian.

I don’t think Coco is anti-Catholic or that it was intentionally disrespectful to Catholicism. If I thought that, I wouldn’t recommend the movie at all. Despite my criticisms, I enjoyed Coco more than not, and at Decent Films I rated it B-minus, which is not a strong recommendation but still a recommendation.

As regards the Catholic trappings, basically I think they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too. If there were nothing Catholic at all in a story set in Mexico during a festival coinciding with All Hallows and All Souls, people would say, rightly, that they were disrespecting Mexico’s Catholic heritage by erasing it. So they put in some Catholic iconography, but the imagined condition of the dead is not only a purely secular one, it’s pretty much closed to any possibility of an eternal afterlife. (This would not have been hard to rectify.)

Your idea about the Land of the Dead being a metaphor for memory is a very insightful approach to the film. There is a similar interplay of these two ideas of memory and immortality in Kubo and the Two Strings (bold = link).

This, though, is on the level of subtext, not text. On the textual level, within the diegesis of the story, memory and immortality are linked, not just metaphorically but ontologically. There is a simple, practical narrative reason why we see only Mexican people in the Land of the Dead: because of the central plot function of family photos on the ofrendas for Día de Muertos.

If we saw non-Mexican people in the Land of the Dead, this would appear to imply that such people are sadly stranded in the Land of the Dead year after year, unable to visit their loved ones in cultures where Día de Muertos is not observed and ofrendas are not set up for them.

This would not, of course, be the most desirable interpretation. If they had to flesh this out further, the peeps at Pixar would probably propose that each culture has its own mechanism for permitting visits from the dead based on remembering and honoring them. However, this would be an undesirable complication in a story that already has more than enough plot.

“I notice many references here to imagination and fiction in discussing the condition of the dead. The reviewer begins with several ‘mutually exclusive’ renderings of the afterlife in a related collection of stories. It’s no wonder Catholics these days are confused about the teachings of their Church. The truth, from God’s word in the NJB, is simple, clear and internally consistent.”

Are you against depictions of the condition of the dead in imagination and fiction? Are you hostile to It’s a Wonderful Life, for instance?

“When we die we go back to a condition of nonexistence, as Adam did.”

I take it you are not Catholic. This is, of course, not the teaching of the Church, nor is it the teaching of the Bible. Learn more (bold = link).

Posted by juan on Saturday, Nov, 25, 2017 4:53 PM (EST):

Thank you SDG.

I thought the Frozen short was intended to be seen with Coco. I’ve never seen the original Frozen so I don’t know what all the hype is about. I did feel that the short went on too long and was not very entertaining. But the children in the theatre seemed to love it.

Maybe by showing the religious imagery and that Miguel’s family were Catholic the movie did honor that tradition. I’m very sensitive to anti-Catholic bias. Coco did not trigger my Spider-sense that it was mocking Catholicism or Christianity. Just because they showed an image of the Virgen does not mean that the movie was intended to be viewed in a religious perspective. But rather the image is there to show the piousness of the family and in the Mexican culture by extension. I recall a statue of Mary in the Dark Knight Rises but there was nothing outwardly religious about that film. I also recall a statue of Guadalupe being carried in a procession in the Cat in Boots film. Being how this film highlighted a religious procession, people interpreted this scene as simply showing a familiar event on Holy days all over the world. That it was the Virgen of Guadalupe placed it in Mexico. But they weren’t in Mexico. This scene triggered me. I saw this scene as a mockery of Catholicism and Catholics. The Cat in Boots exists in the Shrekverse, the land of fantasy where you can bump elbows with the likes of Snow White and Pinocchio. Why would the Catholic Church and Catholic imagery be shown to exist in the land of fantasy if only to imply that our faith is fantasy?

It’s true that we all get out of a movie what we walk in with. I did walk out of the Coco film with a second thought. And maybe the film was not meant to be viewed in a religious sense but more in a physical in practice sense. The theme of the movie was about family and their memory. Maybe the land of the Dead was merely a metaphor for the memories of our ancestors. Instead of toys coming to life it was the collective memories that came to life. There was something I missed. When Miguel returned from the land of the Dead, he was on the floor unconscious. Did he fall and pass out and have a vision a la It’s a Wonderful life when he was out?

I’ve always been conscious of the fact that most of us don’t know our ancestors four or five generations from the past. I met my great grandmother, but I’ve never knew any of my grandfathers since they all passed away very young before I was born. But I already forgot my great grandfathers name. I have to look up my notes to remember it. The next generations that followed me never met my great grandmother. We tell them stories about her and they know her from pictures, but in reality they don’t know her. So I don’t expect them to continue telling stories about her to future generations. Their stories will pivot to their own great grandmothers or grandmothers. And I also saw that in the movie.

The land of the Dead was probably just the memories of those people. It could not be an actual afterlife because only Mexican people were there. Otherwise I didn’t realize that we were that blessed. Only Mexican stars like Cantinflas, Pedro Infante, and El Santo were there. These were all people that Miguel would expect to see there (if they weren’t simply nods to the audience). If anything, Elvis should have been there as he was very famous anywhere that he went. The key is that they face the final death when the last living person that remembers them passes away. It’s the memory of that person that dies the final death. There is nothing left of you (except your DNA) in the world after you die and are no longer remembered. What’s the cliche, the deceased will live on in your memories?

Obiwan had hope because he was a de facto priest of that religion with special training to come back as a ghost. Yoda just disappeared without a mention didn’t he? A fool like Han Solo didn’t believe in the Force but would still return to it after he died.

Posted by Doug on Saturday, Nov, 25, 2017 4:05 PM (EST):

I notice many references here to imagination and fiction in discussing the condition of the dead. The reviewer begins with several “mutually exclusive” renderings of the afterlife in a related collection of stories. It’s no wonder Catholics these days are confused about the teachings of their Church.
The truth, from God’s word in the NJB, is simple, clear and internally consistent.
Man was created with the gift of the possibility of everlasting life in Paradise, that possibility depending on his obedience to his creator. Gen 2:16,17.
When he forefeited that gift he suffered the penalty, death. Gen 3:19; 5:5; Rom 6:23.
The formal definition of death is ‘absence of life’, and the Bible’s is the same. Please read Ec 9:5,10. Compare Ps 115:17;146:4; Isa 38:18. There’s no physical or mental activity in the grave, not even for the “immortal soul”, a phrase which many churches use but God’s word does not.
When we die we go back to a condition of nonexistence, as Adam did.
What hope for us, then, by the scriptures? If we have obeyed God’s commands during life then the value of Jesus’ ransom sacrifice comes to our aid, and we are resurrected “on the last day”. John 6:39,40,44.
Finally, when I was teaching, I would tell my kids, “Don’t get your science, history or religion from Hollywood - the movies always get them wrong.”

For what it’s worth, the advance screening at which I saw Coco did not include the Frozen short. If the filmmakers’ creative intent was for Coco and the Frozen short to be seen and interpreted together, I would expect them to screen both for critics. Since they didn’t, my interpretation of Coco, and that of every other critic who saw an advance screening, is based on the film itself, which is apparently how the studio wanted it.

You ask a good question about classical mythology, and I am happy to answer. I love classical and pagan mythology. I love Spirited Away with all its nature spirits. I love The Burmese Harp with its Buddhist spirituality.

I have no objection to enjoying films like Avatar with its pantheistic spirituality, or The Matrix with its Gnostic themes, or 2001: A Space Odyssey with its secular ascent-of-man motif.

I do not at all insist that a story or a movie must offer Christian hope or a Christian worldview. I can enter imaginatively into an imaginative worldview that is not my own, and find in it elements of truth, goodness and beauty to celebrate and enjoy. I think it is permissible for Christians to enjoy pagan imagination for what it is, and I do not see this as making a mockery of my faith.

So for instance Disney’s Moana includes elements of pagan and pantheist spirituality, and I’m okay with that as far as it goes, because Moana is set entirely outside of Christian culture and history. And I don’t think that mocks the Virgin Mary, because the Virgin Mary is not in that story to be mocked.

And that’s precisely what makes Coco different: The Virgin Mary is in the story.

She is explicitly invoked by the person who says “Santa María!” We actually see her on the wall in Miguel’s house, in the image of the mestiza Madonna of Guadalupe who appeared to St. Juan Diego, saying, “Am I not your mother?” (In taking the likeness of a mestiza, the Virgin Mary demonstrates that Catholicism is not a European faith, and does not come to negate whatever is good and wholesome in Native culture. This does not in any way contradict or negate your charges of white supremacy in Latin America or the forcible imposition of Catholic faith that did take place at times.)

The Virgin Mary is implied in every cross in the movie, on which died the Son of God whom she bore in her womb, birthed into the world and nursed at her breasts. She is implied in the sign of the cross with which Miguel’s Abuelita blesses herself. She is implied in the ecclesiastical culture evoked by priests and nuns, even movie priests and nuns.

So watching Coco, I can’t simply prescind from the world of Christian belief, as I can reading Homer or the Prose Edda, or watching Moana. Coco simply is not set in a world of pre-Columbian tradition untouched by the Gospel of Christ. The Christian story is in the story of the world of Coco. So I am compelled to view the story through Christian eyes.

I appreciate the question you ask about viewing the Land of the Dead in relation to Purgatory. I do read many ghost stories this way, and I am more than willing to stretch the imagery a great deal to do so. I am happy to see Purgatory in movies like The Sixth Sense, for example.

In Coco, of course, we find both good and bad in the Land of the Dead, unrepentant murderers as well as ordinary decent people. But I am willing to stretch to accommodate even this. Perhaps the Land of the Dead is purgatory (i.e., the beginnings of heaven) for some, but the beginnings of hell for others, like the Grey Town in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. You see, I’m more than willing to work with a film.

Your example of Yoda exactly gets at my objection to Coco. When Obi-Wan and Yoda live the mortal world, they do so in calm hope and confidence that this death is not the end. “If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine,” says Obi-Wan (in a line with more than a hint of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and the rebirth of Gandalf the Grey as Gandalf the White). And in fact later we see the Jedi as Force ghosts, making it clear that their confidence was not misplaced.

If Coco had offered any hint whatsoever that “the final death” wasn’t so final — if there had been any hope whatsoever of “moving on” after the Land of the Dead, or of a “better place,” my review would have been completely different. I hope that helps to clarify my response to the film.

P.S. While I have not seen the Frozen short, I would point out that Frozen, like Coco, is explicitly set in a Christian cultural context. Elsa’s coronation ceremony takes place in a stave cathedral with a bishop presiding — and Anna briefly addresses Joan of Arc, seen in a painting on the palace wall.

For what it’s worth, a Christian friend who loved Coco also hated the Frozen short, calling it “awful, cynical crapola” about “having holiday traditions, whatever they are, completely unrooted in any kind of Christmas narrative (or any non-Disney narrative). It’s about as smart as a Magic Kingdom parade.” Of course that’s just his take, and this review is just mine. But there are reasons behind my take, and I hope I’ve explained them somewhat here.

Posted by juan on Saturday, Nov, 25, 2017 9:24 AM (EST):

Hi SDG,

“A “final death” with no hint or hope of a further stage or life beyond seems to make a mockery of that image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the crosses dotting the landscape.

Now, in a film with a Catholic cultural setting and an explicit depiction of the afterlife, heaven is not only unmentioned but virtually excluded. “

I believe that you may have missed the point. The short Frozen film that played before Coco that focused heavily on traditions was a clue and also was to prepare you that Coco was going to be a film about a culture that is very different and alien than what you may be used to. The movie had nothing to do with Catholicism or Catholic culture, that’s true. While I don’t know Pixar’s intent, I think that they honored the tradition of Day of the Dead exactly by not incorporating any Catholic imagery of the afterlife. Day of the Dead is a pre-Columbian tradition (hence the animal spirit guides in the film) that has been celebrated probably for thousands of years. And had any Catholic traditions and views been included in the film, then it would have been mocking and suppressing Native American culture (for lack of a better term). I believe that this is true especially if you take into account the history of Europeans and Catholicism in Mexico.

There was a systematic attempt to wipeout the Native American culture in Mexico by the Spanish and in many cases, Catholicism was forced on the people. A form of “white supremacy” has existed in Latin America that has suppressed Native American culture for centuries. Spanish and European culture was/has been held up as being superior to Native American culture in Latin America. While this idea still exists today, a big change is occurring in Mexico. After the revolution of 1910 a new cultural identity was created that honors both the pre-Columbian and European roots of Mexican culture. And the Native American identity aspect is especially being embraced by Mexican-Americans against the backdrop of American dynamics of race and culture.

Nevertheless, this new Mexican “identity’ is not perfect when the Native American traditions are taken into account. This new identity is heavily Aztec-centric despite the Aztecs being only one of a myriad of pre-Columbian cultures and peoples in Mexico. But nevertheless, the Native American cultures are now being recognized and celebrated. And sometimes these cultures seem very alien to our Catholic sensibilities. But celebrating these cultural aspects closer to their roots is not a mockery of Catholicism.

Day of the Dead is a form of ancestor worship that was synthesized by the Catholic Church to make it more palatable and to make it align with All Saints Day. But this celebration should not seem alien to Catholics. After all, All Saints Day and the Communion of the Saints are but another form of ancestor worship as well. And at the risk of being chased out of here, I truly believe that the Communion of the Saints is a synthesized form of Roman traditions of having gods for every situation and occasion. Sure, why can’t our ancestors intercede for us? But does a musician really have to pray to Saint Cecilia to inspire his/her music because she is the patron saint of musicians? Why can’t St Francis of Assisi help with that? Some traditions are just simply too hard to let go.

While the whole vision of the afterlife was “creative license,” or as you pointed out, “borrowed” from other stories, doesn’t it align with the concept of Purgatory? Isn’t Purgatory a temporary hold-over at the lobby waiting for our train ride into heaven? That the characters stated that they do not know what happens after the final death, why or how is that a mockery of the Virgin? Truthfully, no one knows what our awareness will be in Purgatory or what it is like there. Truthfully, no one knows for sure if there is an afterlife. The best that we can do is hope in Jesus that there is one.

But getting back to the “final death” scene. I was born in Mexico but was raised in the USA. If you recall, Star Wars was a cultural phenomenon in the early 80’s. This franchise (especially the Empire Strikes Back film) introduced a concept of the “Force”. And if any of you were in Catechism during that time as I was, then you would have probably been taught about God with Star Wars and the “Force” as a reference to help one better understand. How ironic that a new mythology or cultural reference was being used to teach us about God. But that’s besides the point. But as an American Catholic being raised in the 80’s with Star Wars in my cultural background, I interpreted that scene totally different. Like Yoda retuning to the Force, the ghosts in the film were returning to the source (God).

Pixar was also sensitive to their audience in this respect. While the Day of the Day is a Native American tradition, the ghosts did not return to pre-Colombian gods or afterlife realms in any of the “deaths”. Had they done this, Pixar might have then crossed some line. By keeping the final death unknown, this allows the viewer to insert their own belief to that scene.

View this film as you would any film about Greek Mythology. Are you offended and is the Virgin Mary being mocked when Disney’s Hercules or the Clash of the Titans films portray a pantheon of gods as being real (in which the Christian God doesn’t exist) or when film characters are praying to them? Or do you just enjoy these stories of adventure? Don’t take Coco so serious either.

For what it’s worth, as a deacon ministering in a predominantly Latino parish — and an uncle to no fewer than nine nephews and nieces who are Hispanic / Latino, from two different families — I am well aware that Latinos can be any race.

The word “race” does not appear in my review. I assume you are referring to my observation that

“after 18 straight features with hardly any nonwhite characters and/or voice actors, all but one set in the Anglophone world, the significance of a Pixar film set in Mexico, with mostly Latin voice talent, is notable.”

The implication here is not that a film set in Mexico, with mostly Latin voice talent” will necessarily have no white characters or voice actors, but that it will probably not have “hardly any nonwhite” characters or voice actors.

It seems clear to me that Miguel’s family and village include many characters who are intended to register as brown, with Native heritage in some cases. Of the Latin cast members, some are white; others are people of color.

P.S. It is true that the deck / subhead uses the shorthand phrase “Pixar’s first film with a nonwhite cast.” The intended meaning of “nonwhite cast” is obviously not that there are no nonwhite actors — the review indicates that there are — but that the film doesn’t have a “white cast,” i.e., a cast that is almost entirely or entirely white.

Posted by Adam on Friday, Nov, 24, 2017 6:32 PM (EST):

Hispanics are NOT a race, nor are Mexicans. I have cousins who are white Mexicans, via my maternal grandfather. Please, this is a misunderstanding of Latin American culture. Race does NOT work the same way in Latin America as it does in the United States. This is not only a pet peeve, it’s offensive. Here’s the US census’s definition of Hispanic and Latino.https://www.census.gov/topics/population/hispanic-origin.html

Posted by Leah Joy on Friday, Nov, 24, 2017 1:55 PM (EST):

I find depictions of human beings after death as skeletal figures or shades or ghosts or suchlike extremely disturbing. I dislike very much the new popularity of Dia de Muertos in its secularized form. I especially dislike the idea that the dead somehow remain, but only as long as they are remembered by the living—as if they had no real and lasting personhood or existence of their own. None of these ideas are consonant with Catholic beliefs. They can be appropriate in fiction, just like pagan mythologies or other forms of fantasy, but it seems to me that secular culture is embracing this view of “afterlife” as an alternative to having to think about what any religion actually teaches.

I was an imaginative and sensitive child and I remember being distressed in ways I could not express by shallow or foolish depictions of heaven or afterlife. I was, and still am, disturbed by the idea that after death people are somehow LESS than they were, rather than more. Thanks be to God I was introduced to C.S. Lewis to feed my imagination in a heathy and Christian fashion: his imaginings of what might be after death for those who love God are full of beauty, abundant life, joy, and redemption of souls and personalities.

Sorry to get so serious! but this is a sore point with me, especially as this new version of “afterlife” is being offered to my children from several different directions. Thanks for your review, Steven—I knew I could count on you to bring solid theology to bear on the film.

Posted by Fred Salvatti on Friday, Nov, 24, 2017 1:37 AM (EST):

Pixar’s glory days were over the minute they were acquired by leftist, feminist, marxist, and therefore atheist-leaning Disney. You can see Disney’s true self in the way Disney-owned abc colors the so-called news; their version of the news is sheer communist propaganda against religious freedom; and they portray immorality as normal, designed to undermine Christian faith in America’s youth.

Over 50 years ago, the leader of communist Russia and the soviet union said:
“America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold:
its patriotism
its morality
and its spiritual life
If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”

Posted by John King on Wednesday, Nov, 22, 2017 5:04 PM (EST):

Thanks for your review Stephen, really appreciate the insights.

The best “dia de muertos” story is Grim Fandango, “an epic tale of crime and corruption in the land of the dead.” It’s a video game, but might as well be a movie because it’s highly cinematic and almost entirely plot-driven, rather than skill-driven. In that story, the dead calaveras can be “sprouted,” which means they are shot with flower seeds from a gun (it’s also a film-noir pastiche). They then sprout flowers (marigolds, etc.) all over their bodies and eventually “die,” their fate remaining basically unknown. There is an aspect of “final rest” as well, which is said to be the aim of all souls. I think it all works really well in context, because in many film noirs, the characters are basically living in a “land of the dead” of sorts, always vainly pursuing money and power.

I know this has nothing to do with the movie, but I really like Grim Fandango and had to share.

Posted by jim louis on Wednesday, Nov, 22, 2017 5:04 PM (EST):

Thanks for the thoughtful and interesting review. How would you compare “Song Of The Sea” to “Coco” in terms of depicting Catholic imagery and then how to follow through with the imagery? I remember the former had kind of a magical ending but it was done in a way that didn’t make you think Catholicism wasn’t still a part of the movie world and its characters.

I agree with you that Pixar would be best to stop with the sequels, but that’s only sequels that aren’t named Incredibles 2 and directed by Brad Bird.

Posted by mrscracker on Wednesday, Nov, 22, 2017 3:17 PM (EST):

Thank you so much for this review. It gives me a better idea what to expect when I see this film with a couple of my grandchildren on Friday.
The issues you mentioned will be good talking points. Their mother’s family is Southern Baptist/non-denominational & that’s really all they’ve experienced. At least the Catholic symbols & culture in the film will give them a little exposure to that & we can have a conversation.
Except for the weird denial of Heaven/Hell it sounds like a great idea for a movie.
I visited San Francisco several years ago around All Souls Day & it was bizarre how the whole hipster/alternative lifestyle neighborhoods embraced Dia de Muertos but rejected Catholic teaching. And not just rejected but were positively hostile to the Church. They had Day of the Dead parades, outdoor exhibits, costumes, window displays, etc & there were virtually no Hispanics in sight.
Maybe it’s similar to what Mardi Gras has evolved into for some folks.
Anyway, thanks again. I was hoping you might do a review before we see the movie.
Have a blessed Thanksgiving with your family!

I would feel a lot better about The Incredibles 2 if either Coco or Tomorrowland had been a much better film.

Posted by Edward C. on Wednesday, Nov, 22, 2017 12:49 PM (EST):

... still, if there’s one Pixar sequel that fans have been demanding for YEARS, it’s Incredibles 2. I hope it is worth the long wait.

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